


Look Alive, Sunshine (Retcon)

by KateMonster



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: AU, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-25
Updated: 2011-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-17 06:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KateMonster/pseuds/KateMonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fun Ghoul always remembers. Not everything, but he remembers bits and pieces. (Canonical character death and spoilers, of a sort, for the Sing video)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look Alive, Sunshine (Retcon)

It’s raining in the desert.

The kid loves it when it’s like this, clean and pounding down, no metallic tang of something chemical to the rain that pelts from the sky in waves across the bare rock. So does Gee, and the two of them stand together with their faces bare of masks and tipped to the sky. In a minute, they’ll look at each other and take off, laughing and trying to dodge the drops.

And Frank blinks against the drops that have gathered in his lashes, sees the flash of a blaster behind his eyes, pressed against the set, dark line of someone’s jaw. He shakes his head, hair flopping wetly into his eyes, and steps back under the dubious shelter of a half-burned out gas station roof as Mikey laughs.

“Crazy,” Ray says, and Frank just nods.

~

The car’s different. He knows it is, just a little bit, but he can’t figure it out.

“Did you put something new on the car?” he asks, the next time they stop for ten seconds, a couple hours into zone five because basically everybody has to piss or throw up, thanks to the potholed, more-dirt-than-asphalt expanse of the Dust Highway.

Gerard looks at him like he’s a nutjob and kicks his boot against Frank’s.

“No,” he says. “I haven’t seen paint in weeks, except for that whitewash in the truck stop.”

White. A hard, white floor coming up to meet his skull and the flash behind his eyelids when he’d hit, someone’s knee knocking hard into his boot as they’d slid down the wall. A black shape with its back to him.

“Yeah,” Frank says. “Something’s different about it, though.”

“It’s covered in goddamned dust, dude,” Gerard laughs as Mikey and Ray come over the ridge, with Bunny swinging between their hands and yelping with delight.

“Right,” Frank says.

~

There’s a meet-up, signal flares blazing a path deep into the desert, and at the end of it, somebody’s jury-rigged a barbecue and No Way Jose’s passing around jars of the fiery shit he makes from cactus juice. Bun tries to steal a swallow and Ray fusses, but Frank catches Mikey slipping her a tiny taste on the sly and he just grins.

There’s a girl, too, dark hair falling into her eyes, and she says to call her Pop, but when he does, her hand wrapped around his cock, it feels like the whole world skips for a second. Like a needle scraping over vinyl, loud and nasty, but she smiles at him, even when she has to nudge his hand under her skirt because he isn’t paying attention anymore.

When they stumble back into the firelight, he’s not smiling and someone’s handing Gee a battered paper packet. Frank flops down next to him and grins as he watches Gee’s fingers, rolling tobacco into a tight paper cylinder.

“Excellent,” he says, and he passes it off to Frank who lays back and feels the warmth of Gee’s lips on the paper and the cool night air on his face.

~

It goes down at night (again, he thinks), and it goes bad. Gerard standing with his shoulders squared and broader, somehow in his red leather jacket. And that’s not right, is it, wasn’t it blue, one long blue line from blaster to shoulder, one hand bracing the other, like he’d learned to shoot a real gun, not these stupid toys, before, sometime when recoil was a problem.

Ray’s kicking ass, but Frank thinks Mikey might be down too. If only he could see, more than black shapes against the desert stars, flashing purple and green in the glare of the blaster fire.

There’s no white floor to sprawl on (like before), just the dirt of the desert, and there’s something spreading thick and wet into it where his stomach feels like it’s on fire. Frank’s sucking in breaths that taste like iron, and he can hear Gee screaming something that might be Mikey’s name, if it had any consonants in it. Korse looks bigger from down here, Frank thinks mildly when a boot connects with his face, and then all he sees is black.

~

The next time, Gerard kisses him awake, one hand curled in Frank’s hair, holding his head up off the wet dirt, and the sun’s either rising or setting behind Gee’s smile.

“Gross, guys!” Bunny yelps and Mikey and Ray agree loudly.

Frank smiles and lets Gerard pull him to his feet, the night before already fading to a blur in memory under the solicitous attention of Gee’s hands. Frank snaps the elastic on the purple mask hanging around Gee’s neck and kisses him good morning.

~

“Retcon?” Frank asks, leaning his chest heavily into Gee’s back and setting a cup of coffee to the left of the drafting table. The Fabulous Killjoys logo on the page is larger, brighter more colorful, and he thinks Gerard’s changed Party Poison’s outfit again. He can feel Gerard’s cheek pulling up in a lopsided grin when he presses his own against it, but Gerard’s hand doesn’t stop moving, sketching in the lines of Kobra Kid’s turbo glove.

“I couldn’t just let them die like that,” Gee says and Frank shakes his head minutely.

“Is Fun Ghoul grabbing Party Posion’s ass?” he asks, pointing and Gerard laughs.

“Art imitates life, Frankie,” he says. “Plus, subtext is out, baby. Canonically gay is in.”

Frank hums agreement and steals a sip of the coffee. “Good call,” he says, sliding his hand down Gee’s chest.


End file.
